Flashback of scary spitting laughing man on the wall of the cabin

For some reason I remembered this creepy toy on the wall, with the laugh.  I think Grandma had a rule that we could only pull the tie once a day.  It kept us kids entertained.

Happy Mothers Day

Yesterday my Mom and Dad came over for dinner.  Austin, Jacob and I were busy making chicken, mashed potatoes, fruit salad, rolls, pumpkin pie.  We were in the kitchen for hours!  But it was like thanksgiving and it was delicious.  Cathi was able to just read to the little ones while we made dinner.

I sure love Cathi.  She is a fantastic Mother!  We are currently attending a dance class on Saturdays for four weeks.  We've learned Foxtrot and Cha Cha.  She's so patient with me.  I occasionally make a mistake and step on her foot.  Plus I wear my normal everyday boots which are steel-toed.  Not the best dance shoe, especially for her.

MSNBC edits out profanity from video of Al Jazeera correspondence

This morning I saw this video on MSNBC, and while the Al Jazeera reporter was talking I heard a male voice I assume coming from potty mouth Joe Scarborough from the MSNBC studio whisper the "F" word a couple of times.  They have since edited out that whispering.  The editing was so poor that you can hear the clicks of when they removed the whispering.  Listen closely at 4:36 and you hear the sound all of a sudden get "smothered", and then a "click" where the whisper removal happens at 4:50.


I am amazed that it was allowed to go unedited for several hours.  I had troubles with my Audacity this morning cause I wanted to record it, but gave up after wasting time with it.

MSNBC,  make sure your idiots in the studio who whisper stuff for whatever reasons (which is totally audible and annoying), at least use language that isn't obscene.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Bragging on my bro

Brendon finished the SLC Half Marathon in 1:57:32

I hope I don't embarrass Brendon here, but I'm feeling a little honored to have this guy as my brother in law.  Two years ago if he opened a fortune cookie and it read "You will run a half marathon in under 2 hours", he probably would have laughed and said, "Yeah right!".

But as I was thinking about all the obstacles he's overcome, and his willingness to try something like running which at first is pretty painful and takes some mighty willpower to keep doing day after day when it hurts, I thought of a motto that seems to fit him:  "Busting down barriers, and hurdling all excuses."

In my opinion, those are just a couple of problems that people have with losing alot of weight and getting into shape. (Speaking from experience being huge and out of shape) I'm sure he's feeling so much happier finding a new life of fitness, healthy eating, and looking good!

Way to go Brendon!  Running your first half marathon should definitely be a confidence booster for Ragnar!

Work related post - Don't use NOT EXISTS in query

Ever need to look for missing data? For instance, the table TLD_HEADER is the header for TLD_SALES_DATA, TLD_MGR_OVERRIDE, TLD_REASON, and TLD_TENDER_DATA. Originally there was no foreign key on these child tables to TLD_HEADER so after years of collecting data, there were some cases where TLD_HEADER records did NOT EXIST for the other TLD_ records.

 Once we made it a true parent of the other TLD_ tables, we had a problem and had to create a script to create the TLD_HEADER records in order for the delta that creates the FK to run successfully. (Create_TLD_Header.sql)

This query was used to identify missing TLD_HEADER records from TLD_SALES_DATA:

select distinct site_no, tran_dt, reg_no, tran_no
from tld_sales_data tsd
where NOT EXISTS (select *
                                     from TLD_HEADER
                                   where site_no = tsd.site_no
                                       and tran_dt = tsd.tran_dt
                                       and reg_no = tsd.reg_no
                                       and tran_no = tsd.tran_no);

However in a customer's environment it was taking 7 hours and 53 minutes.

A sql guru looked at the script and suggested this query instead:

SELECT /*+ index_ffs(tsd TLD_SALES_DATA_PK) index_ffs(th TLD_HEADER_PK) */
distinct tsd.site_no, tsd.tran_dt, tsd.reg_no, tsd.tran_no
FROM tld_sales_data tsd, tld_header th
WHERE th.site_no(+) = tsd.site_no
AND th.tran_dt(+) = tsd.tran_dt
AND th.reg_no(+) = tsd.reg_no
AND th.tran_no(+) = tsd.tran_no
AND th.rowid is null;

Very interesting. Do an outer join, but where the th.rowid is null? That's kind of weird. But believe it or not this query picked up the same number of records, but did so in 26 minutes. That's 18 times faster! How embarrasing. So if you need to locate records that DON'T exist, use this method where an outer join is used instead of an inner join with a NOT EXISTS!

Russell Hantz gets farted off Survivor

Russell "the best player ever to play Survivor" was finally muscled out of the game and none too soon. Now I can enjoy the show and not hear this guy run his mouth about how awesome he is.

Anyone else glad or does anyone actually like this guy or respect how he played?

Uncle Karl's interview on the Radio

I found out about an hour too late yesterday that my uncle Karl was on the radio with X96.  Thank goodness they offer free podcasts.  So if you missed it and want to hear him discuss the ins and outs of being a football referee, you can listen to it here:



Nice job Karl!